Tag Archive for: guitars

Who reports on the reporters? News Group Newspapers — part of News Corporation, which owns a large portion of the world’s news sources — has paid more than £1 million to settle legal cases and hide that reporters have been breaking the law in order to break stories.

If you fly United Airlines and they break your stuff, there appears to be a decent chance that they will not pay for repairs or replacement if you complain to them. However if you write a song about it, they’ll come to your rescue:

There has been some controversy in the UK recently about expenses being claimed by MPs, prompting the Prime Minister to apologise on behalf of all MPs of all parties. But the other side of the coin is the rabid media, who — as can be seen from this article — go over the top and ignore facts that do not fit the story they wish to tell.

Perhaps this is typical of British news reporting, but it is sad all the same.

Below is a guitar amplifier built from a cigar box:

I have spoken before regarding why the Pirate Bay is different from other BitTorrent indexes, in terms of their guilt for copyright infringement. Their latest caper merely feeds into this: they appear to be proposing to pay their fine by drips and drabs, thereby costing those collecting the fine millions more than is being collected. It is this short of childish disrespect for the rules which made them an easy target to begin with. The plan, if executed, is flawed in two ways. First, it is clearly in contempt of the court’s ruling — one has to believe that there is jail time associated with following it. Second, purposely costing a law firm millions of krona — and advertising that this is what you are doing — is a good way to be sued for those krona and lose another court battle.

The approach taken by the Pirate Bay is infantile and shows a huge lack of respect for the entire judicial process. This is not a good sign for their legal prospects, and does a disservice to everybody else who believes that illegal download sites are a symptom of what’s wrong in the entertainment industry and not the cause of those problems.

Sometimes “take your kid to work” days end badly. Particularly when one of your co-workers decides to shock the children with a stun gun. Quote from the man who shocked the kids: The big shock came when I got fired.

Over sixty? Like being the subject in erotic photos? The do not go to Massachusetts, where a proposed bill would make such photography illegal. That’s right — mentally competent seniors would not be able to consent to being photographed in a lewd manner. I call it the old people are gross bill.

China has a unique approach to the failing economy: Ordering workers to smoke more. Workers who do not meet their smoking quota, or who smoke the wrong cigarette brands are fined.